As cloud computing become an unavoidable topic in any discussion related to IT strategy, learning from those early adopters who have first-hand experience of moving to cloud-based IT environments becomes essential. We have all heard the theories about what the cloud promises, but moving from theory into practice is where things get complicated, and this is where hearing from IT leaders with real-world experience comes in.

In this CW500 Club video, Peter Ransom talks to Computer Weekly editor in chief Bryan Glick to share his practical advice on how to move to the cloud.

Read the full transcript from this video below:

CW500 Peter Ransom chief information office, Oxfam

Bryan: Hello. Welcome to this Computer Weekly 500 Club Video.My name is Bryan Glick, I am the Editor-in-Chiefof Computer Weekly. We are here again at ourregular monthly get-together of IT leaders. This time wehave been talking about Cloud computing and,in particular, we have been hearing from someIT leaders with some real life practical experienceof making the move to the Cloud, and talking aboutwhat it is really like and what they are actually doing,rather than having a theoretical discussion about whatthe Cloud might mean. I am joined by one of our speakersat the event today, Peter Ransom. Peter is theChief Information Officer at Oxfam. Peter,thank you very much for coming and joiningus today, it is very much appreciated.

Peter Ransom: No problem.

Bryan Glick: I said that we are here to talkabout practical experiences of the Cloud.From your perspective, Oxfam, what doesthe Cloud mean to you? What are you doingwith the Cloud?

Peter Ransom: It is good, is it not? What does the Cloud mean?It is one of the topics. It is pretty much whatever you wantit to be. For us, it was about the ability to buy expertise.We, as an organization, obviously, an IT operation and,therefore, one of the problems we have is difficultyrecruiting and keeping a high caliber staff, plus thedemands in the industry are significant. The other thingwe have is we have very peaky demands on our shop,for example. We have a normal load during the normal year,at Christmas, it goes up by 10 to a 100 times, the demandat the shop. However, if we have a humanitarian issue,for example, recently we had Pakistan and East Africaat the moment is a big one, but previous to that was Haiti.The demand can be a 1,000 times on the system that weneed, and Haiti brought down the infrastructure. There wasso much demand in it, and, of course, that means that wewere likely to lose donations, people who were trying todonate to us could not do that. It brought our reputationdown because people just moved on to the next charity,and those charities are competing, but we do,we compete very much for people's money,so we lost a lot of income.

The Cloud allows us to have that infrastructurethat can we burst. One of the most hyped elementsfor a Cloud is that you can scale rapidly, and that iswhat was significantly attractive to us, in that ourdemand is very peaky, so stuff began, predict byChristmas and the demand on the shops, but other times,it could be within an hour's notice, and we have to havethe ability to bring power up, other servers up very,very quickly.

Bryan Glick: You clearly answered some very obvious needsthat the Cloud was going to plug well into. How did you find makingthat move from a predominantly in-house infrastructure into using the Cloud?

Peter Ransom: We had a mix of in-house, where we werelucky to virtualize province, but we also had anoutside that is steadily hosting the environment.It was challenging and has been challenging becausewe have moved in an innovative way, recently. It ischallenging because it is new, it is a new set of skills.Previously, there would be technical-only skills, nowthere is very much commercial management.

We went to intent for the contract, and oneof the challenges we had is how insufficient procurementskills to negotiate the right contract, and it becameobvious to us that we did not, so we sourced those externally.It took us, instead of weeks to negotiate a contract,it took us months, and we had to use scenario planning,we had to run through 'what ifs, and we found the eventualsuppliers. We whittled them down to three, and eventuallypicked one. It was new for them, as well. They are areas thatthey did not know how to respond. Then that brings in writingnew contracts, writing new service perhaps, trying tofigure out where does responsibility lie, where doesaccountability lie.

If a Cloud fails to provide the service because of anexceptionally high peak because of a Haiti, let us say,or East Africa, who is ultimately responsible? Who is accountable?Who is going to pay what? Simple things like that, but sitting there,and the lawyers getting involved and you can imagine most largecompanies and us, it sometimes took weeks to resolve somecontractual elements. Post implementation has beenrelatively smooth. We have had a number of issues but mostlyyou put those alphabetically down. The first projects weput on stream were three weeks late, on the target date. Today,we just issued a notice that we put 14 more applications on,a month ahead of schedule, and the FD is very pleased. They have alwaysseen it they are operating faster, and in fact, it appearswe are getting all the benefits we wanted and more.

Bryan Glick: That is fantastic. You have a lot of experience with Aero,technically and commercially, with it. For a fellow IT leader who isstarting out on the road that you have been down, what would be thebiggest piece of advice you would give to the, from your experience?Peter Ransom: Start with the end. What is it you would really like?Then play back. We did not go out to get a Cloud solution, we wentout to get a solution to our problem, and the Cloud was the bestsolution to our problem, but it required a whole lot of services around it.If you go down that path, you are getting into different skills.Think about your skills in the workplace to manage service contracts,rather than deep technical skills. The other thing is, for us, we werenot brave enough to go to a public Cloud, instead of a private Cound.I still think the jury is out on whether the public Clouds are really theright way to go. Think of the end in mind, have the end in mind, thenwork back and try, and get a big picture.

Bryan Glick: Great. Thank you for that advice, Peter,that was fantastic. Peter Ransom, CIO of Oxfam, thank you verymuch for coming out and talking to us today. That is all wehave time for in this video. Keep an eye out on our website for videoswith the other speakers, from for tonight's events on planned computing,and also from our previous CW500 events.

I will be back with another set of videos with house speakersfrom CW500 next month.

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